upcoming republican convention sched.

[nor]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

Originally posted by fett:
Republicans may well teach someone how to fish. But they will make the poor bastard go out and buy his own fishing pole. The Democrats will give the poor bastard a fish and $20.00 and not care that he spends it on two dime bags.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is the clearest, most absolutely true thing I have read in a while.
[img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[hippietim]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

I generally think of musicians as creative and clever thinkers with a heart and soul (whatever heart and soul means to you). At the same time, I've never met any Republican that was creative or clever or had a heart or soul (except for the one they get to visit on Sunday while they PRAISE THE LAWD).

So the thing that confuses me is how anyone can be a sincere musician and a Republican at the same time. That's like saying you are a tree-hugging vegan as you eat gristle.

So all you Republican guitar players must denounce one or the other. It is not necessary at this time have your spouse do any denouncing. We will handle that in phase 2.

[nor]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

[img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
I reject your proposal, Tim, as the rantings of a twisted mind....
[img]graemlins/refuse.gif[/img]

Remember, the PMRC was created by DEMOCRATS...

[Newc]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

So we owe the End of the Great Depression to the Japanese, then.

Newc

[YetAnotherOne]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

Originally posted by Newc:
So we owe the End of the Great Depression to the Japanese, then.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Correct as far as it goes but it does ignore the primary economic problem in the US that exacerbated the Great Depression and prevented our economy from recovering: taxation. After the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, Congress quickly enacted the first mandatory income tax in the US and top marginal rates quickly rose to well over 70%, business stagnated and by the early 1920s the top marginal rate had been trimmed to around 25% at which time business boomed. Unfortunately, by 1932 top marginal rates had again risen to nearly 70% and it doesn't take a rocket scientist (which I actually was few years ago BTW [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] ) to understand that when those who possess the wealth that could be invested in business find large portions of that wealth confiscated by the government they'll be less likely to risk the remainder in new ventures. Doubly true when a poor economic outlook makes new ventures even more risky than they are in normal economic times. Couple this massive increase in taxation of the only portion of the population that had the resources to create private sector jobs with Roosevelt's extremely aggressive enforcement of tax collection (a new thing for the US at the time) and you have a recipe for disaster: punitive taxation + zealous enforcement sucking capital out of the private sector and into government coffers thereby destroying the ability of the private sector to create jobs (and in turn wealth). Poor tax policy was only one of the causes of the Great Depression but it was very probably the single biggest factor in our economy's inability to claw its way out of the malaise on its own.

WW II did what the suffocated economy could not do on its own: re-ignite the private sector. But to do so required massive deficit spending (far more in real terms - as a % of GDP & receipts - than we've seen before or since). Thus was born the idiotic notion that underlies Keynseian economics: that government spending can invigorate the private sector. True to a point but for it to remain true said spending must be far in excess of tax receipts (because a dollar taken out of the private sector in taxes and returned as less than a dollar in government spending in the private sector must, in most cases, result in a net loss of private sector jobs as compared to that same dollar being left in the private sector) and therefore is not sustainable over the long term.

Bleah, it's too early in the morning for economics. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[fett]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

WOW. I would love to read your stuff when you are wide awake. There was a worldwide depression prior to WWII. Germany was in a state of near collaspe because of the war reparations demanded by the French. Gearing up a war machine was Germany's answer to economic revival. Ditto for Japan. In retrospect, it's too bad the US didn't do the same. We may have been able to prevent the war by flexing our muscles. On the domestic front, our Depression was a result of "irrational exuberance" during the 20's that was allowed to run rampant by Washington. Booms are always followed by busts. What made this bust so dramatic was it's international scope. The general lack of faith and the unwillingness of business to spend on a recovery left FDR little choice but to intervene. After all, isn't it the government's ultimate responsibilty, as a last resort, to save the nation?

[SeventhSon]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

"If you're in your 20's and you're a Republican, you have no heart. If you're in your 30's and you're a Democrat, you have no brain."

"Q. What's the definition of a Republican?
A. A Democrat who's been mugged."

That said, I can't say I'm going to vote for Bush.

With regards to personal responsibility, I'm right wing.
Environmentally, I'm left wing.
Corporate responsibility, I'm left wing.

Ever since the creation of the entity known as a corporation and its legal status as being the equivalent to a real person (which had the effect of indemnifying the people who ran the corporation), corporations generate wealth without concern for the environment, what laws they break, who they fleece, who they kill (due to flagrant violations of OSHA). They are pathologically greedy and look out for their own self interests. In fact, an FBI psychologist analyzed the responses from a corporation to a set of profile questions and concluded that the person who answered the profile questions was a sociopath.

[YetAnotherOne]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

Originally posted by fett:
[QBOn the domestic front, our Depression was a result of "irrational exuberance" during the 20's that was allowed to run rampant by Washington. ... The general lack of faith and the unwillingness of business to spend on a recovery left FDR little choice but to intervene. After all, isn't it the government's ultimate responsibilty, as a last resort, to save the nation?[/QB]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No argument here about the worldwide financial troubles in the 1930s but we were a FAR more insular nation then than we are today. That implies (correctly IMHO) that international financial troubles, while they would have had an impact, would have had a dramatically smaller impact than they do today since we were far less dependent on foreign trade then than we are now.

Also no argument about massive military spending snapping nations out of economic hard times (e.g., Germans pre WW II, the US during WW II, or the US during the 1980s). But there are counter examples: the Soviet Union's inability to match Reagan's defense spending brought about their economic implosion in the late 80s. But that's all really beside the point, the point is that a dollar confiscated and spent by government is normally much less efficient at creating private sector jobs than a dollar that remains in the private sector. That's almost definitional in nature: if the government takes a dollar out of the private sector, some portion of that dollar goes direction to support the government (i.e., the bureaucracy) while something less than the original dollar may eventually be spent by government in the private sector. That is to say that government creates a natural drag on the economy, like an anchor, in direct proportion to the amount of taxation it imposes and the amount of money it spends (if said money would otherwise have remained in the private sector). Thus for the government spending alone to have a real and large net positive impact on the private sector, said spending must (almost by definition) be greater than the amount of money government has removed from the private sector (i.e., the government must engage in deficit spending). The exception is the de minimis spending in which government must engage to regulate the markets such that they function efficiently but exclusive of secondary, tertiary, and effect farther afield, that's a fraction of a fraction of what government spends. All excess spending (that not directly or very closely related to helping the markets function efficiently) removes capital from the private sector, destroys jobs, and causes relative economic harm to a capitalist economy. Remember, we're talking about economic objectives, not social ones.

As you correctly pointed out, the federal government played a large part in allowing the conditions that led to the stock market crash of the late 1920s to develop, just as they did in facilitating the development of the conditions that led to our most recent crash. But the market crash of the '20s was symptomatic of larger and fundamental problems, not the cause of them. There wasn't a single cause or a seminal event to which one can point. However it's very fair and entirely accurate to say that the post-crash tripling of federal income tax rates destroyed the ability of the private sector to recover on its own. Had Bush immediately raised the top marginal income tax rates to the early 1930s level of around 75%, we'd right now be in another Great Depression. But he didn't, he cut marginal rates slightly to inject capital into the private sector and as a result we're coming out of one of the shallowest recessions in the history of our nation even though we experienced the near perfect economic storm of a massive stock market bubble bursting, the largest attack ever on the US mainland, a natural downturn in the business cycle and capital flight to foreign economies due to accounting scandals at home.

Government's first job WRT a capitalist economy is to ensure that the markets function efficiently. Enron et al. are examples of a failure to do just that. But so are excessive taxation and spending at a level that places the government in direct competition with the private sector for investment capital.

Originally posted by fett:
Booms are always followed by busts. What made this bust so dramatic was it's international scope.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No different than today, or the early 90s, or the early 80s. Historically, at any given time most of the world's economies haven't been very healthy.

[OnlineStageGear]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

Ever since the creation of the entity known as a corporation and its legal status as being the equivalent to a real person (which had the effect of indemnifying the people who ran the corporation), corporations generate wealth without concern for the environment, what laws they break, who they fleece, who they kill (due to flagrant violations of OSHA). They are pathologically greedy and look out for their own self interests. In fact, an FBI psychologist analyzed the responses from a corporation to a set of profile questions and concluded that the person who answered the profile questions was a sociopath.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Honestly, that is so pathetic and full of crap. Ewwwwwwww, coproprations are evil... they are all out to get you.

"Out fot their own self interest" News flash for ya. YES THEY ARE. And so are you and me. You sure as hell don't wake up and go to work for the interest of your boss. You are doing it for the paycheck at the end of the week, aren't you ?? And ya know what, the organizations that would lead you to believe they are out to help you against these corporations are also out for their own interests.

Rant Off.

Matt

[Swillmaster]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

Read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Not as entertaining as the latest issue of Maxim, but might give some perspective on this thread.

[the_drip]

Re: upcoming republican convention sched.

being a musician really has nothing to do with the political party you consider yourself a part of.

It has alot more to do with your career choices.

My career choice is a musician/educator, plus I'm fresh out of college, so I have more liberal viewpoints on things. Also my family gets ripped off by company CEO's everytime a republican is in office. By the BNSF and Northern Montana Health Care respectively.